Sunday, November 25, 2007

That old time religion...

So, in response to accusations that they are letting the arcane tribal proscriptions of a bunch of neolithic goatherds influence modern jurisprudence, the Saudis reply with "But... but... she violated Shariah law!" (Speaking of arcane tribal proscriptions, before we get too self-righteous let us all give thanks for a moment that our jurisprudence is not administered by Brylcreemed good ol' prophets with dog-eared copies of Leviticus.)

I myself find it hard to believe that we are living in the 21st century if there are peoples on the planet live by such irrational substance. I can not believe what I am reading. Bring on the baboons as these so called Sheiks ask them to suck their tit for oil now. Wow! Now they show their true colors. I am so mad I would gladly shove a Hybrid up their oil well. Excuse me while I vomit some more oil. These guys need to get a grip and treat the victim of rape by seven guys who happened along and she was ripe for the taking because of what? -- excuse me, I need to dry heave because there is nothing left in a society that act like this to any human ... God, it is true ... we are all living in the final times when no one can hear your loving voice. I am ready to heave again for the total injustice reflected in the story. Sheik? Sheik? Sheik, who? He is Mr Sheik Oil to us in the US. Now there is a guy you want to work for ... I am beyond being stunned by this report and ready to heave again at the thought of 200 lashes for getting raped by seven men. Where is a God when you need them?

So you agree ... there must be a baboon in charge! I want to meet him and whip his little monkey ass into 2007. Put him on an Iceberg in Antarctica and let him let the polar bears teach him about what the fu*k is going on that is more important ... but why should they give a flying ---- blub blub blub

To give Leviticus its due, if we lived by that, all men would have square beards--and Brylcreem was denounced from the pulpit back when it was still 'macassar oil.' It all comes back to the oil, doesn't it?

Far as I can read, The Industry shows up just twice in Writ: once in the New, where yer Christ chastises foolish virgins for not bringing enough oil (rat own!); & at the very end of the Old, the Refiner's Fire thing. Now you & I know it wasn't sour-ass Arabian they were refining, but I live in a town with a lot of refineries and even more lolcat evangelicals, so have managed to bullshit them so far.

2 punishments in 1: castrate rapists, and put them in the theatre. Then we could let him without stones sin the cast first.

...it's our petro dollars that support it...it's our congress and president that bankroll it...the Saudi Royal family plays to the clerics...not the New York Times. Christian values? Turn your cheek or turn the page....consumption of oil matters most.

Just goes to show, money and oil talks and justice walks. As long as they have oil, and big money invested around the world, these goat herders can do wahtever they want. No one addressed the issue that the majority of the 9/11 hijackers where Saudi. Let's face it, they have powerfull friends in Washington, and can get away with murder.

I say we follow the teachings of the books of Terry Pratchett. At least his fiction is a bit more entertaining than that of the goatherders or the brylcreemers. I'd take Vetinari over any of the new (notso)presidential candidates.

....See, yet another situation that could only have been improved by gettin' some stamped-steel .45 Liberators (or something similar) into the hands that need them most. Once Saudi women start handing early exits to would-be blackmailers, rapists and S&M judges, it'll be a much brighter and better world.

It is, however, an interesting thing that the rulers of the Kingdom are hemmin', hawin' and comin' up with excuses; there was a time when they'd've clammed up and dared the rest of the world to say somethin' about their barbarism. It may not look so much that way but they're feeling the heat.

"sounds like a republican and a democratic strategy" (see Jonathan, below). I must abandon world trade in any resource presided over by neolithics? 'We' 'boycotted' Rhodesia, then SA; how'd that work out?

Abandon your industries for moral offense, and you play into World Govt's hands; send a regulator after every goatherd, and you're a neo-con. These rustic cavaliers only stick their heads up when their 'sacred ancient way' is disappearing like a Bushman dialect; strand them, and they'll behead one king, hold an election, vote in al-Satan, and the oil all goes to China. Better, or worse?

No, mockery is sufficient. To really teach the Sauds a lesson, use up their damn oil, and make them survive on their NYC real estate portfolio.

Matt - that last one's actually pretty specific. As to the rest, if you actually want an answer, it's in the various letters after Acts.

roberta - good point! Encouraging, thank you. Kinda makes me wonder actually - as awful as this whole oil dependence is all around, might there not be some benefit culturally, as it shines some worldly attention on what's going on in these countries?

There isn't a damn thing that I'm aware of in the Koran about a woman's adultery justifying rape. The actual prescribed punishment in the Koran for adultery, man and woman alike, is eighty lashes and being prohibited from remarrying to anyone but another adulterer. Really. It may seem a bit harsh (though no harsher than the Old Testament, IMO), but it's a very long way away from rape and execution.

The extreme brutality toward women in so many Middle Eastern countries is not about Islam, though that's what they'll say it is. It's about extreme sexual insecurity on the part of the men in that culture, and the compulsion to totally dominate women as a result. There's no more real scriptural justification for it than there was in the Bible for the Inquisition.

When you have religion versus culture, the latter will subvert the former almost every time.

I think very highly of the Light Of Publicity; it can create lasting change. Adding mockery to the mix is even better.

However, in the short term, I'm of the opinion that "Kel-Tecs for the Oppressed" might do more, quicker. ("Won't you please help? For under $250 and mere pennies a day for ammunition, she'll never have to be afraid again..." Oh, you only thought the mullahs were frothing at the mouth before!)

There's an SF novel that touches heartbreakingly on the treatment of women by Islamic fundies; same author wrote The Glass Harmonica. Here it is: The Terrorists of Irustan (Thanks, Amazon).

"I think very highly of the Light Of Publicity; it can create lasting change. Adding mockery to the mix is even better."

Unfortunately, no. You're using your Western brain on people whom decidedly don't think Western (or plain ol' civilized, for that matter) and it just doesn't work that way in real life. That's also why the whole "winning their hearts and minds" strategy has been in large part such a dismal failure. What you're suggesting would be to them rather like saying turkey is evil on Thanksgiving and we should all have tuna instead to us. You're messing with tradition, and generally that drives people the opposite way you intended. The last thing in the world we need to do is unite these people...which is exactly what the higher-ups of Muslimdom were trying to do with that cartoon stink a while back. Bad medicine.

Besides, Light Of Publicity and mockery don't seem to work very well when it comes to creating lasting change in this day and age. Just ask any celebrity skank that's flashed her slut box for another fifteen minutes.

The only real solution is to get off their oil and make them irrelevant, or at least inconsequential should the whole lot need clear-cut. If we're lucky they'll dissolve into total civil war (not the half-assed thing they've had going on for centuries) and off most of each other.

Well, given that getting off their oil (the implication there is getting off oil for the most part in general) will require new technology, I can't see why China, India, France, Germany or Japan wouldn't adopt it. Though, that's not really the point. Not being involved is.

Consumption in the USA, interesting topic. Who are the biggest consumers in the US? I can name one, Al Gore, travels by private jet almost continuously, or if he has to go by land, his preferred vehicle is a Cadillac Escalade, he has 3 mansions, each of which consume more energy in a month than my whole household uses in a year. He is also quite fond of Chilean Sea Bass (an endangered species since 1999), for lunch. BTW: did you know Al won a Nobel Peace Prize for his efforts to save the environment?

who cares if it's Al Gore or Geo. Bush...it's OUR problem...U.S. ....as a resident of Montana,I live in a rural county with a pop. less than 10,000... It's one of the larger counties in Eastern Montana. Family income hovers around 30000 a year. The country's bird hunting,big game hunting etc...once unsurpassed.I live here by choice...oil and gas exploration are destroying the fabric of my community... meth, alcohol abuse, power lines for raptors to prey on the remanants of once plentiful sage grouse.... trailer courts....f$$k you....f$$k you.

f$$k you...and your S.U.V., look no further than Gillette, Wyoming.Just because you've destoyed everything east of the Mississippi....arrogant bastards....oil exploration, natural gas....you won't be satisfied until you stick a pipe in the last wild place in America.....f$$k you.It's not the Saudi's its U.S.....

"oil and gas exploration are destroying the fabric of my community... meth, alcohol abuse, power lines for raptors to prey on the remanants of once plentiful sage grouse.... trailer courts....f$$k you....f$$k you."

Anon (1), I'm Chamberlain because I don't care to watch India fight China in the WWIII that ensues when jihadis take the Saud fields? You have a funny notion of "peace." Ron Paul couldn't keep us out of that one.

Anon (3), I live smack-dab on top of the largest oil field in the world, always has been, always will be. Know what? It all grows back, elk and all. You wouldn't be there, and the hunting wouldn't be so good, if your agriculture hadn't totally failed. Dumb move on someone's part, and I don't think it was the oil company. And that damn electricity! I'll bet your state government fought that, tooth and nail. Meth and hawks, blame big oil, wow. Know what? In central Illinois last summer, I saw them double-cropping corn for ethanol. That's right, two cuts of corn in one season. What do you suppose that does for the grouse? You want 220-foot windmills in the middle of the migration flyways? Some nature lover.

"Oh, and my compact car gets 30+ MPG if I don't drive it like I stole it (which is usually.)"

Oh come on, follow Skippy's example and get all self-loathing. Weenie for us about how it's made by those dastardly Bavarians then vow to donate five bucks to Holocaust survivors. Forget and spend said money at Starbucks.

Whew, shucks, where were we? oa, I appreciate your concern on that (now that we've covered the trailer park and meth part); I have some real unease about another current major economic involvement. But keep in mind that 'fungibility' factor. 'We' is going to be a real nonvoluntary thing here, due in part to those big oil fields under me and MMM-tana. The "world's oil" isn't really gone; so far, everything else is about twice as expensive.

If "we" commit to that x-times-2 economy, China India etc. would actually be pretty dumb not to do business on the basis of US cost/over/2, unless we're willing to invest in, oh, piracy for example, to guarantee an even higher(morally correct) oil price to them. And there you meet Sonny & Cher's other kid, Cui.

Here, I have to walk on eggs: the next step [from the 85 IQ gang you just had to meet] goes like "We gotta just take that oil." And I like Roberta's plan better. Hell, I like a lot of Roberta's plans: check out her NYC post, she even understands that AC/DC thing.

oa, if you're talking about what it sounds like, hell yes. I read a very pretty physical-science account of how oil may not even be organic in origin, that it may be part of the planetary process.

If you just mean magma, the core spins faster than the crust, and so ought to outlast you & me; steam taps seem to go through equipment pretty fast, though. Maybe we could just wire it up as an alternator. I've got a guy working on that. Betcha Tesla had it sussed.

To get back to the rapes and lashings, though: a close friend was a delegate to an international women's scholarly conference in 1978, that included some "official" progressive female muslims. I brought up genital mutilation--I always do--and she said their answer was "it will take care of itself in time." I didn't think that was much of an answer. To think about: shall we spring to the defense of a class of people who are likely to turn back to their old ways? Conversely, in 29 years, that one practice has begun to fade; would you wait another 29 for the beatings to cease? Would slavery, to take an example, have faded in 29 years, absent war and a million casualties? I'm not a fan of cost/benefit arguments, but that one right there's a duesy.

Magma cooks down to oil is what I'm gunnin' for. Hell, they've found the stuff deeper than the bottom layer of life. Some fields have "magically" refilled themselves to a small degree. Seems to me it's not entirely impossible that it reduces down to carbon sludge.

"To think about: shall we spring to the defense of a class of people who are likely to turn back to their old ways?"

Genital mutilation, rape, beatings...you can't save people from themselves. Plenty of guns over there. Lots of stuff to make other stuff to blow things up. If they really wanted to fight back, they could, and damned effectively.

Reminds me a bit of the people here that think a woman that's been raped is somehow morally superior to one that's shot the son of a bitch dead.

comatose..owning a farm in central il. we only make one corn crop... no one makes two....home of a.d.m...decatur,il,....red tail hawks and geese migrate tam, sage grouse are a mono culture bird...hence sage....no corn..no soy beans...no f***king bbq.

This is aimed at the folks who blame oil for the ills of our society. The rest of you all, please let me rant for a sec.

I work for an oil company. I work in exploration on the leading and trailing edge of production. I see the land before virtually anyone else in the company touches it and I see it again when we are in the last stages of development.

Much to your dismay we the oil workers tend to be a pretty clean bunch. Go out to a well site or an exploration tract of a MAJOR (not local mom and pop shop) oil company. Look how clean things are. Look at how we try to keep up on the maintenance, roads and etc. We make jobs, we give folks royalty payments. We reclaim the land when we are done. I know this because I approve the permits, and I pay the damages for the land. Yep we have our problems, but considering how much of the stuff we move each day the amount spilled is truly astonishing (we move roughly 40 million barrels a day around the US).

Now the Meth and such. I don't know about you, but I don't remember seeing that in the training manual at the company. I do remember mandatory random drug testing. I don't think the oil companies are making it and distributing it. Not us. We make enough off the oil that we don't need it.

The animals etc? I pay for biologists to study the land prior to working on it. I pay for Archs to tell us where to go and what to preserve. I hire engineers to tell us about drainage so we don't rut the land. I hire MMO's to look at whales. I pay for enviro's to do research on animal behavior. Heck I even pay for trees that die while we are on the property and cows the croak down to chickens that won't lay eggs. Want to see pristine or near pristine wildlife and plant life in southern California? Go to an oil field because that is where all of the critter's go. They don't go live in the subdivisions. I don't mind paying honest damage claims and reasonable permit fees, but I get irritated at the money grubbers who see big oil as their savior for their lack of hard work and laziness.

Now on to the geochem. Oil from magma is a joke. Sorry it don't work that way. It takes geothermal heat, but magma and oil don't mix. The heat from intrusives or extrusives happens too fast and would break down the oil. Yes we have oil fields that we have produced more then is physically possible. That means that the oil is leaking off a deeper reservoir and coming up dip to this reservoir. It just means that our production matches the maturation rates.

Why do the novices always think the world is so static? Oil is being generated today right now. Just slower then we produce it.

Oh yeah. What does alcohol abuse have to do with oil? I don't remember us producing any more of that either.

So, bottom line? You don't like oil? Don't use it. I don't care, my company does not care. If the US does not want our oil, then we will sell it to China. Its just a commodity to me. I find the stuff and we produce it. It goes into a pipeline off to some terminal and after that who cares, my job is done.

Oh, yeah, by the way, your car or truck probably runs on my gasoline or diesel. Thanks for supporting my company and my bonus! It brings a smile to my face to think about how much you are taking money out of your pocket and put it in mine (indirectly of course).

Anonymous(es), will you ferchrissakes get yourself a name? I feel like I'm talking to Sybil, here.

anon in Decatur, it's north of you, right under that big new effin wind farm on the ridge. I'm sure I saw 600 acres, just from the road. Bureau County, maybe.

Grouse are in trouble all over the country; "sport mowing" is their doom. Most farmers, even modern big-scale guys, will leave a little scrub and thicket here & there. The ethanol pressure is pushing on that pretty hard.